The Era of Depression, Surrealism and Modesty
The Depression era in Canada, encompassing the 1930s, was marked by notable changes and innovations in fashion. Despite the widespread economic challenges of the period, fashion continued to progress, showcasing a resilience that mirrors broader societal trends. Historically, fashion has consistently exhibited a dual nature: it remains both a constant and a dynamic force, adapting to cultural and social contexts while serving as a form of expression that surpasses economic and political situations.
Throughout the late 1930s, fashion trends evolved to feature longer garments that closely adhered to the body, utilizing bias-cut designs. The emerging silhouette emphasized a curvier yet slender form, complemented by impeccable hair and makeup.
Hairstyles were elaborate, meticulously styled close to the head, paired with clean and refined makeup. The prevailing aesthetic of the 1930s aimed to achieve a balanced facial appearance, evoking a sense of modesty and propriety. Hats played a crucial role in this fashion narrative, reflecting an underlying spirit of playfulness and experimentation. This marked the decline of the bohemian and chaotic fantasy associated with the flapper era.
The cloche shifted from the very tight, brimless style to a close fit but with an exuberant brim.
Right at the end of the 1920s, Greta Garbo wore a re-imagined cloche in a film. Folded up very flat at the front (forehead) but with a larger and floppy brim on the sides and back. These were often between 5 and 13 cm. The "Garbo Slouch" seemed to have opened the door to larger brims like the picture hat but with new materials, shape, and proportion.
The new slouch hat complemented the streamlined coordinated day suits and sportswear. These hats were made in any fabric and were barely decorated, if at all. They started with brims all around of varying widths but morphed into a small brimless style more like a beret than a cloche.
Throughout the decades, early slouch hats significantly influenced numerous hat designs. During the 1930s, fedoras, panamas, sun hats, berets, and cloche shapes all adopted a slouched style, a trend that reappeared repeatedly over the century. This style was characterized by a relaxed shape, the absence of sharp defining lines, and a lack of stiffening in materials like felt or straw, or at least the appearance of such.
Additionally, these hats were typically un-decorated.
Adding decorations such as arrows, darts, or feathers to the hat introduced a new method of shaping without making it appear overly worked and compensated for the lack of stiffening.
This approach highlighted the relaxed influence of the slouch design, which stood in stark contrast to the more structured hair, makeup, and clothing styles of the time.
Elsa Schiaparelli, a famous fashion designer of the age known for her surrealist designs, created the "Mad Cap" beret. In 1930, obviously influenced by the slouched Garbo hat, it became an international success.
These knit, brimless hats could be shaped, stretched, and placed on the head in near endless combinations. The new hat complemented the hairstyles and illustrated the experimental spirit of the decade.
These Mad Caps could be made at home but a milliner could also make them with minimal materials and would cost up to 75% less than most felt hats to buy.
The home knitting and crochet industry surged with innovative yarns and fibers to cater to the experimental Mad Cap trend. Numerous new yarns featured stretch rubber elastic. The pattern leaflets also offered designs for scarves, jabots, collars, gloves, gauntlets, shoe covers, and purses, which could be created to complement and transform a basic outfit. This was a significant benefit during the Depression.
This evolved into knitted crowns with felt or straw brims attached. Again, either make at home or at a milliner's.
This direction of make-at-home millinery put further strain on the professional milliner to remain in business and contributed to the slow decline of the profession.
Returning to the early part of the decade and other hats available, the sailor hat changed from the 1920s style worn with a deep crown to the eyebrows to a shape and crown depth more familiar to us today. The brims were smaller, as was the overall trend of brim size.
The tricorn, bicorn and French beret were still around but again, the proportions changed to be more shallow.
Felt cloches were considered the "slouch" style but also would have small jockey-like brims, and top-stitching was a popular decoration. A definite move towards what would eventually become American Sportswear in future decades.
In 1933, the Panama hat and the slouch fedora were taking center stage. The influence of film in fashion was increasing, and hatters started making felt hats for women with traditionally men's shapes in the new slouch fashion.
Throughout the decade, sporty hats were either a French beret or soft and feminine interpretations of men's styles. These were excellent to wear with daytime suits and outerwear like fall/winter coats.
The summer hat of the decade was the picture hat. Returning to the round crown and round brim, these hats were made in fabric, straw, and lace as well as traditional summer hat materials.
Most often worn with a brim that dipped over one eye and curved gently around the head, only lifting slightly. A change from the folded up and down sloped brims of the 1920s.
Lacquered fine straw became a very popular material for summer, and because the hat shape barely changed in the decade, women could re-dye or paint the straw to match their new clothes.
In the early 1930s, gold's value dropped, which somehow led to gold lamé becoming highly fashionable. This fabric, along with golden embellishments, was extensively used on evening turbans for the recently invented cocktail hour.
This new social occasion created a niche for a new style of hat. Elaborately decorated, small hats called cocktail hats emerged.
These cocktail hats were pocket sized and not unlike many of the small fascinators we see today.
The cocktail hat became an arena for the burgeoning art of surrealism. In 1937, Salvador Dalí collaborated with Schiaparelli to design the iconic shoe hat.
These innovative hats not only defied traditional norms but also tested the milliner's craftsmanship. Freed from conventional hat shapes, designers explored new materials that aligned with surrealist aesthetics.
The technique of wearing these hats also required consideration. How would the hat stay on the head? What methods would be used, and how might these affect the design's original intent? These were challenges the milliner had to address, and they did so successfully.
Schiaparelli's surrealist fashion and creative exuberance led the way for her contemporaries, like Lilly Daché, to make very small and highly decorative hats called doll hats that, in Daché's future, were reinvented to be the famous Carmen Miranda headpieces.
Daché was a French American credited for American surrealism and, at her peak in the 30s and 40s, draping turbans directly on the heads of her clients.
These highly creative hats also introduced the pillbox hat in 1934-1935. This shape was an ideal stage for exuberant creativity.
Veils and ribbons on these styles appeared more and more, and snoods materialized with the doll hats.
The late 1930s saw the softness of mens hat shapes continue with fedoras, panamas and homburgs worn on jaunty angles with a dipped and gently wavy brim.
The constant presence of the turban evolved from the softer flapper style to more structured hats. The temporary turban made from scarves continued in the background as casual attire, reappearing during WWII.
The last few years of the 1930s also spied the cheerful decorations of the doll hats start to influence day wear and replace the simple forms and clean cut lines with extra feathers and more decoration.
The war, which began in 1939, immediately impacted millinery, and since Paris remained the center of millinery design, changes occurred rapidly. The 1930s marked the start of this transformation.
The whole decade can be viewed as a period of exploration into innovative and experimental millinery for the first time.
The allure of readily available media and the advent of new materials and techniques elevated a few milliners to superstar status, a phenomenon that had never occurred before and wouldn't happen again for many decades.
The willingness of these and other now-anonymous creators to embrace the creative freedom of the 1930s and offer their designs to a variety of clients, even through licensed copies, make-at-home patterns, and fully bootlegged hats, allowed most women to be fashionable and chic.
This accessible approach to millinery wasn't a strategic plan but seemed to emerge from media influence encouraging frequent changes in personal style, achievable at nearly any economic level. This seemingly democratic accessibility was actually capitalism at work during a time when increased choices positively impacted people's lives. In millinery, hats became mostly easier to make, reducing the consumer's reliance on trained milliners.
The response from milliners appears in the surreal and fantasy hats created by Schiaparelli and Daché. Is this shift away from the need for skilled milliners good or bad? Or is it neither, merely a change in societal needs, thoroughly documented so that readers and historians can indulge in nostalgia and sentiment?
Regardless of the stance one takes, the 1930s granted us the liberty to design surrealist hats, which will undoubtedly pave the way for more creative avenues in the future.
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